Sharing all the latest developments and information concerning Acinetobacter spp. was the main objective of the International Symposium on the Biology of Acinetobacter 2017.
Acinetobacter spp., and A. baumannii, continues to be a major nosocomial pathogen in the hospital setting and the absence of effective treatments represents one of the most urgent medical needs nowadays. It is currently estimated that more than 65% of bacterial infections and 80% of chronic infections are caused by biofilm-forming bacteria. Therefore, there is an urgent need for finding successful anti-biofilm compounds against this pathogen and to do so, good, consistent and well-suited with high-throughput methods for determining drug susceptibility of bacterial biofilms are required.
In this context, Fundación MEDINA participated in the symposium by displaying a poster with the description of a rapid, accurate, sensitive, reproducible and straightforward screening method to identify microbial natural products extracts belonging to the Fundación MEDINA collection with activity against Acinetobacter baumannii biofilm formation. This study also described the parameter optimization required for a statistically robust high-throughput screening as well as data from a preliminary screening of 320 extracts.
VALIDATION OF AN AUTOMATED ASSAY FOR ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII BIOFILM INHIBITORS FROM A MICROBIAL NATURAL PRODUCTS COLLECTION De la Cruz M, Martos CJ, P. Sánchez, A. Melguizo, C. Díaz and Vicente F